Not sure what you expect from this thread, I would simply use what works best, the ASIO driver.
Would that alone solve the issue for you ?

Thanks for giving some information, but you didn't tell anything about your system.
What system do you have ? A Laptop or a Desktop System ? CPU, RAM, Mainboard, SSD or Harddisk ?

Other recommendations and questions:
- Using an ASIO buffersize of 512 or 1024 sounds reasonable, but did you also try 2048 ?
- How is the system load in such situations where you have audio instabilities ?
- Can you deactivate LAN, WLAN, Bluetooth, internal soundcard to see whether problems might come from there ?
- What Windows Energy Profile are you using ?

My personal experiences with audio players under Windows 10:
I am using ASIO for MusicBee (my main player) and foobar2000. Last year I asked Steven Mayall, the MusicBee owner, to fix an issue that playback with content of different sample rate could not be played back successfully. Since this is fixed I am very satisfied to use MusicBee with RME ASIO driver. Maybe this could also be an option for you. But also foobar2000 works well with ASIO on a last recent Windows 10 Pro 20H2 installation.

Sometimes I also experience audio drops when using the network, as the network driver seems to issue a lot of DPCs.
Changing the network driver from Microsoft to Intel for my i350 (v26.2) chip brought more stability.

The following information should only be used for desktop system which have better cooling compared to laptops.

But still it seems to be advises to use - at least for my system - to use the energy profile "High Power".

Best results I achieved using Process Lasso Pro where I can use some additional features that are very practical, like e.g.:
- automatic switching to Energy Saving if the system is idle for 30s (configurable), feature IDLE saver
- automatic switching of Energy Profile based on the application, with the  possibility to bypass IDLE saver for certain apps
- pinning of application to CPU cores

My default Energy Profile is now a modified (*) version of Energy Profile "Balanced":
Setting Core Frequency to 80% = 2.9 GHz and disabling CPU core parking.
(*) you can modify energy profiles by using "Park Control" from Bitsum and also disable cpu core parking with it. But careful when tweaking. Make photos / screenshots 1st before manipulating. And always take care, there are settings for AC and DC (battery) operation. Always check CPU temperatures under load esp. with laptops. Too much heat can result in additional noise and that the system throttles automatically CPU clock or that you get an alternation of clock speeds which you need to avoid, especially for recording we want a stable CPU clock.

As soon as I start MusicBee it does several things:
- automatically sets application power profile "Bitsum High Performace" (Bitsums modified version of "High Power")
- sets CPU priority to "high"
- sets CPU affinity to all but the first (of 6) cores, because the 1st core always has the highest number of DPC counts
- sets I/O priority to high (as it also accesses disk and network sometimes, to be on the safe side, not sure if really needed)
- induces so called "Performance mode" which prevents that IDLE saver becomes active even if system is IDLE.

BTW: I set up Process Lasso Pro, that the core engine is being startted as a service, so that you can control more processes compared to starting it up as user.

Nice in this setup is the automatic switching of Energy Profiles and priorization based on system state and which application I start with the possibility to disable the IDLE saver for some application, so that a Music Player or backup can run at highest Prio even if I am not active on the system = the system is IDLE.

But still there are situations when playing back Music with MusicBee where I get a short audio glitch although the ASIO buffersize has been set to safe 512 buffers and the CPU load on the system is under 5%.

Its difficult to say whats causing this, I assume that there are still issues with the application MusicBee, as I never had an audio drop with Cubase.

Final warning: do not tweak too much with Process Lasso Pro not to screw up your system. Some people even say that lowering prio for certain processes can lead to better result instead of hoping that a priorization does the trick. It's not an  easy topic.

Sorry, don't have your hardware. At least no issues with UFX+, MADIface driver: 0.9735, Foobar 1.6.2
Performing volume changes in Foobar2000 using these 4 different drivers:
- ASIO driver,
- WASAPI shared, push, event
Windows 10 Pro 20H2, Build: 19042.985

> You can set up each component in the power management settings,
> no need for extra software. You can also set up minimum and maximum cpu

I know, thanks, but it's easier to configure it in this tool, as you have all in one place including frequency scaling and turning off CPU core parking.

The intention was not to say, you need to use it or to do it the same way I did. As I mentioned, I only tried different things to re-gain the stability for Music Playback in MusicBee that I am used from Windows 7 using the ASIO driver with even the lowest amount of samples (32).

But the issues that I have (only sometimes to loose maybe a few samples for a moment) occurs maybe one time in 15 minutes it is not compareable to the issues that you experience.

From time to time a have a certain gut feeling, that Windows 7 was better than 10 in regards to audio playback also in combination with network access.

Lerian, this file is much too large: 4h28m, 258.1 MB, Clubhouse Sessions - Digital Love - Dating & - in VR, AR.mp3
Please shorten it to a - at max - 1 min long demo file where the named effect occurrs.

I will try to summarize the situation how I understood it after reading your postings again and more thoroughly.
Thanks for providing additional information and what you expect from this thread.

You mentioned in post #1

So playing audio using the RME ASIO driver seems to be fine, no RME ASIO driver problem here.
Before the installation of additional software and the Windows Update everything was working fine,
even playback of audio with foobar2000 using WASAPI.
So this seems to be a problem that might be caused by the Windows update.

The easiest way would be to restore your System Backup from the day before the Windows Update.

Regarding your expectations, see post #3

Sorry, I have other HW and drivers. I tried my best to check and compare whether I can reproduce any of the issues with WASAPI, but can't reproduce anything. I also tried now changing the ASIO buffersize while playing back audio with foobar2000 using the 3 different WASAPI driver,s, no issues.

As nobody else is responding I fear, that you might be the only one having this problem. I would wait for a few days until middle of next week and then contact RME support per Mail and ask if they know about such issues after Windows Update. You can find the address of your local RME support contact here: https://www.rme-audio.de/support.html

Sorry, but I think you are coming to wrong causality and conclusions here.
1. it's more likely that something screwed up during Windows update, can be fixed by making backups and restoring them (Macrium Reflect Home is the best most reliable tool that I know)
2. You can use your recording interface using the RME ASIO drivers. If you have an echo during recording than you need to check/admjust your recording settings in TM FX and Reaper.

Thanks, i don't really try software on my audio computer precisely to avoid these kind of problems. I use a virtualbox for that, and install on my main computer only when im sure and what i really need to run on actual hardware instead of a virtual machine. It saves me from having headaches. I also use the freeware HiBit Uninstaller portable which can monitor the install process of a program to wipe everything clean in case something goes wrong. But i guess the windows update is another kind of wrong.

Have you listened to the snippet? Does it play correctly on your wasapi?